Whole Roots Or Piece Roots
Categories:
Fruit Growing
For commercial apple orchards which is preferable, trees grafted on
piece roots or on whole roots? On behalf of the piece-root trees it is
claimed they sprout up less around the tree. On the other hand, it is
claimed they never make a vigorous tree. What is the truth?
Value depends rather upon what sort of a growth the tree makes afterward
than upon what it starts upon. Theoretically perhaps a whole-root tree
may be demonstrated to be better; practically, we cannot see that it
becomes so necessarily, because we have trees planted at a time when the
root graft on a piece was the general rule in propagation. After all, is
it not more important to have soil conditions and culture of such
character that a great root can grow in the orchard than to have a whole
nursery concentrated in the root of the yearling tree? As for the claim
that a root graft on a piece-root never makes a vigorous tree, we know
that is nonsense.